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President-elect Donald Trump said he will issue an executive order on Monday that will ensure that the companies that helped TikTok stay on the service will not be held liable for violating the ban passed by Congress.
TikTok The service was suspended this week ahead of Sunday’s deadline which required ByteDance, the app’s Chinese owner, to sell the video app to avoid a ban on app stores allowing downloads.
I’m asking companies not to let TikTok stay in the dark! Trump said on his Social Reality platform on Sunday.
“I will issue an executive order on Monday to extend the time before the legal restrictions go into effect, so that we can make an agreement to protect our national security,” the president-elect said.
Trump also said his order would ensure that the companies that helped TikTok stay on the service would not face “liability”.
Earlier on Sunday, Mike Waltz, a Florida attorney who will be national security adviser when Trump is inaugurated on Monday, told CNN that the president-elect would consider allowing continued ownership. of China but with “firewalls” to ensure that the app’s data is “protected here so far. US soil”.
Trump said in his Public Truth post that he would like the US to “have a 50% ownership level in joint ventures”.
“By doing this, we save TikTok, keep it in good hands and let it say (sic) up,” Trump said. “Without US approval, there is no TikTok. With our approval, it’s worth hundreds of billions of dollars – maybe billions.”
“My first idea is a joint venture between the current owners and/or new owners where the US gets 50% ownership in the joint venture between the US and buys whatever we choose.”
Lawmakers and US security officials believe that the Chinese government could use TikTok to obtain information about Americans that would aid espionage. TikTok denies that China has control over the app.
The Supreme Court on Friday upheld the ban, which came into effect on Sunday. Mr Trump on Saturday said he “could” extend the sales period for TikTok, which has been downloaded by 170 million Americans, for 90 days.
But Republican lawmakers, including Tom Cotton, chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, and Nebraska Senator Pete Ricketts, said in a statement that “there is no legal basis for any kind of ‘extension'”.
One person involved in drafting the TikTok law said there is no provision in the law to be extended once the January 19 deadline has passed.
The law allowed for a 90-day extension if certain conditions were met – including evidence of “substantial progress” on the divestiture and “binding agreements” to enable the process – but only if they could arrive early.
In a separate interview with CBS television, Waltz said Trump needed time to evaluate potential deals to save the device.
“What we need between now and Monday is to buy the president time to review those agreements and if it gets dark, it’s clear that there will be a big problem,” he said.
Mike Johnson, the Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives, told NBC that he believed that when Trump said “save TikTok” the president-elect was talking about ways to “try to force real division”.
During his first term, Trump issued an executive order to prevent TikTok from operating in the United States, but it was blocked by the courts. His administration also tried to make a deal that would ensure China would not get the information. China’s national security laws require Chinese companies to provide information when ordered by the government.
Last year Trump expressed opposition to the congressional divest-or-ban law, saying it would help Facebook, which has banned him from its platform for two years. Facebook competes with TikTok with its Instagram app.
